Selkirk Loop Tour - Day 1 (Bonners Ferry, ID)

Greetings from Bonners Ferry, Idaho! Today was the first day of my tour around the Selkirk Loop in the Selkrik Mountains of northern Idaho, British Columbia and northeast Washington. For those of you that followed me on the last trip I have a few new things to bring along this time. First of all, I have a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad so if you thought I was wordy and rambling before...brace yourself. I also have a new camera so hopefully the pictures come out well!
I took about two days to drive up here and stopped in Big Timber, MT which is about 13.5 hours from Omaha. I stayed at a hotel that was built in 1890 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Pretty cool place...

Here is the route I took today:

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You'll notice the first 20 miles don't make a whole lot of sense when you see the highway right next to it but there was construction on the highway. What was nice about this route was it was incredibly calm (I probably saw a total of 20 cars in 20 miles) and scenic. I started in Sandpoint, Idaho which is right on the edge of Lake Pend Oreille which is a huge lake. Sandpoint itself is a very bike friendly community with striped bike lanes and sidepaths throughout the town. It helped me avoid some of the construction in town.
After I got through town, I was treated to some (mostly) flat terrain and good roads. Most of the route was paved but there were a few gravel roads along the way but they were very hard packed so it was almost like riding on pavement. Here are some pictures from the start:

You'll notice how foggy it was in the earlier photos. It's been in the 80s during the days here but getting cooler at night (low 50s) so in the morning the fog and clouds come down off the mountains pretty heavily. Once it burned off you could finally see the mountains. In this part of Idaho the mountains aren't like the ones you think of in Colorado. They're entirely tree covered. Lot of pine trees up here.
After I got done with that stretch (about 20 miles) I got back on the highway which was pretty miserable. Traffic was heavy and there wasn't much of a shoulder so I didn't do anything other that keep my head down and ride. My pace was much quicker that stretch too. Thankfully that should be the worse stretch of the trip. After 10 or 11 miles of that I turned off on a side road that is a back way in to Bonners Ferry which is a very calm and scenic road. The highway is on the bridge.

Once I got into Naples (a little town right off the road) I came up on this:

There was one other bike not in the photo. I went into the place (a small general store) and there were four people proably in their 60s sitting down eating. They're doing part of the route I'm doing and we rode together for a few miles and then went our separate ways. The rest of the trip today had quiet traffic and good scenery:

That was the entrance into someone's acreage.

There were trees with these types of berries all over the side of the road. I wasn't adventurous enough to try and eat any. And as I rolled into town I came up on a golf course!

That's it for today. It's fairly early here (I'm in the pacific time zone) so I'm off to go explore the town a bit! Until tomorrow!

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